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• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2021

  Overall: Not worth $60 and $17 Day one DLC for 5 dinos, leaves a terrible taste in the mouth. Don't get it till price drops. Most of these "Improvements" could've been a free update or a DLC not a $60 price tag. Could've added an AI patch and released a biome with Aquatic dino DLC. What I really wanted to see was the depth planet zoo have in terms of building and park management. Don't really care for chaos theory or campaign. At this point we just want to play planet zoo dinosaurs if this is the best Fronteir can do with the Jurassic Park IP(being limited by Universal I assume). Could've saved money on voice actors and licensing Jurassic Park. Can't wait for Prehistoric Kingdom. Buidling: Building Enclosures is so shallow. Build a the enclosure drop some foilage and a watering hole and you're done. Give me Planet zoo's building depth! UPDATE: I tried to enclose a Brachiosaurus and it needed the enclosure to be covered with Trees. Just mindlessly cover it with trees until its needs are met. LIke WTF? It was a pretty big enclosure too 1/4 of the map. The positive: Dinosaurs feels more alive in this game.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2021

  I don't understand how they messed this up twice... This feels very reminiscent of the launch of the last game, but even more dysfunctional. For every point of feedback from the fans they listened to, they seem to have taken multiple steps back. Just...how? Campaign mode borders on being the laziest part of the entire game and can be beaten in under 3 fucking hours, with the bulk of what you actually want to do being reallocated to Chaos Theory mode. This game is completely disorganized compared to the previous one. They removed a couple aspects of tedium only to double down and ramp it up in other cases. Hooray, they removed the stupid contract teams. Holy fuck, they added fuel and staff micromanagement + having to manually scan dino conditions constantly?!?!?! WHY? WHO WANTED THIS?!?!?! THEY KEPT THE SABOTAGE MECHANIC. Why would you keep this?!!?! It was almost unanimously HATED. WHY?!?! Why would you make ranger team additions an UPGRADE MODULE?!?! There are constant visual bugs with light artefacting that is giving people serious migraines, myself included. It is not necessarily a terrible game, but it is absolutely not worth the asking price and it is incredibly disappointing that they seemed to have disregarded so much feedback from the fans and made this game less fun in favor of mindless tedium. I don't understand how they can get planet zoo right, but fuck up Jurassic World TWICE. That is impressively stubborn and it makes me think the devs have their heads up their own ass as far as their design philosophy goes. And if the devs are reading this, how do you not understand that we wanted a much grander version of JPOG? HOW DID YOU NOT FIGURE THAT OUT? How is it that the modding scene along with all of its overhauls and improvements to the first evolution by removing a shit ton of the mind numbing tedium NOT tip you off that "hey, maybe players just want to be able to have an extravaganza in our game and we should focus on working on mechanics that help facilitate that and give players lots of options and content?" Instead, you made staff micromanagement a fucking nightmare and now everything meaningful needs scientists which has caused the game to slow to a fucking crawl. Congratulations. I hate to be mean, but the blueprints were right in front of you guys and you went off the wall AGAIN. Every aspect of tedium that should NOT have made it into this game: - Scientists being needed for everything. There is so much excessive micromanagement now and you can no longer effectively have multiple things going on at once like you could in the previous game. Sorry, STAFF BUSY. - Same as the above, but RPG stat requirements on the scientists to tackle not only research, but hatchery incubation (which is multi-staged now with different requirements), expeditions, fossil extractions, etc. Sorry, but you need 3 scientists with 4 Logistics to do 'x'. Sorry, but you can only use 3 scientists to do 'y', so they need to have at least 5 genetics. WHY? NO ONE wanted this. This is multi-layered tedium. - Ranger team numbers being gutted - Dinosaur status scans being constant. If you were going to introduce this mechanic, it should have been exclusive to the campaign and done ONCE per species for immersion factor. Fuck off with this constant "requires status check" BS. (Yes, I know ranger posts automate this, but they're bugged & goes back to the ranger team #'s problem. The point is that this shouldn't even be a mechanic to begin with. It adds NOTHING to the game other than another layer or micromanagement tedious nonsense.) - Scientists needing to be manually told to rest - Fuel for generators (AND main buildings) vs the same ugly ass pylon + station spams from the first game. - The sabotage mechanic still being in the game. - Severe reduction of building efficiencies - Demolishing buildings takes time now. Why...? - You still have to manually refill your feeders (or the response facilities if you spam ranger posts). At least they increased the reserves this time. - Sandbox mode is, yet again, heavily locked down like when it was first introduced in JWE. You have to play through the rest of the game and unlock everything in order to get access to said things in sandbox mode. Hope y'all weren't hoping to just jump in and play to heart's creative content. - Highly restrictive map borders and unoptimized landscaping are still issues - New Fossil slot system is a huge downgrade. I took time off of work for this. We got bamboozled by the marketing. Edit: Good news. As of an hour ago, 6:30 EST, a few of the popular trainer sites now have working trainers for this game that get rid of some of the tedium. My advice, play with those trainers. Edit 2: Wow, didn't realize this review would blow up. I suppose I should address a few things since the comment section has already devolved. Yes, I was mad, sleep deprived and suffering from a severe migraine (induced by one of the bugs in this game) when I initially made the review. I am not changing it to tone down the dramatic anger at the time. What happened happened and it would be dishonest of me to do so and try and backpedal. Take that for what you will. Yes, I understand that some of the tedium is just "takes 5 seconds" level of exaggeration, but that time accumulates and builds up and infringes on other things. These types of comments are completely missing the point... The point was that there is so much combined tedium that completely ruins the experience and that it has completely robbed the game of any enjoyment for me and apparently many others. Yes, I understand that some of you wanted this level of micromanagement. However, I think you should consider the fact that many of us did NOT want that and have gone to equal lengths and contributions to make that apparent to the devs. Our opinions and play time matter just as much as yours. The devs could have, at the very least, implemented more optionality into the core gameplay, maybe have a hard micromanagement mode (for you guys) and a stripped down more creative mode (for the rest of us). If you feel personally targeted by this review, then I am sorry but that is not my issue. Yes, there are positives to this game. I do acknowledge that and I didn't really think it was necessary to list them out when my position is concerned with the overwhelming negatives. If I didn't list it here, then it should be safe to say I didn't have too much of a problem with it. However, if absolutely necessary... Positives: + With the exception of a few changes to the UI that look less polished than the first Evolution, Evo 2 is still gorgeous in its overall aesthetic. You won't find a better looking dinosaur management game than this mini franchise. + The soundtrack is simply wonderful. If anything, I think this is the one decision I am fine with and even applaud them for. The soundtrack was beautiful in the last game and that carries over to this one. + New dinosaur animations/behaviors are always a welcome plus. We needed a bit more, but I will give credit to the fact that there are more. + Aquatic and actual Aviary habitats this time around... This is what most were excited for and they mostly delivered. Could be better. + Time manipulation is your biggest saving grace for cutting down on tedium. + Mixed Eras is base in Sandbox now. Unfortunately none of this makes up for the negatives, from the ones carried over from the first game, from all of the tedium outlined above, from the continual use of the obtuse Cobra engine (which has somehow even worse in terms of optimization this time around), from the lazy double campaign (main + CT). Buy it on sale Edit 3: Once again, I am sorry if some of you feel personally targeted by this review. I know I have already said this, but I am now receiving random friend requests from people in the comment section who then want to bombard me with why I am wrong. I am not gonna debate on a personal level about this game.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2021

  Suprisingly, this game has a lot more negative reviews on launch than I though it would so, i'm gonna talk about the positive things. Firstly, the game has beautiful graphics and the dinos look amazing in game. The game has more dinosaurs than the first game with the addition of revamped flying reptiles and the new marine reptiles; while I haven't seen them in game I've seen enough youtube videos on them to say that the aquatics are great, though they are mainly for show since they don't really do anything special other than swim around and eat fish (or sharks for the Mosasaur). I haven't looked at the flying reptiles in any way yet via in game or youtube but, they are definitely better than in the first game. There are more flying reptiles to choose from when making them and you can edit the terrain in the enclosure plus, when they break out instead of flying away never to be seen again they terrorize your park until you get them under control. Gameplay (Campaign): In the campaign you follow Claire and Owen across the U.S. to safely locate and enclose dinosaurs that are scattered across the country after the events of Fallen Kingdom. The gameplay is quite different from the first game since your goal isn't to create but, gather dinosaurs into a certain location. You will have to safely bring dinosaurs into your facility/park?. You either rescue the dinosaurs in the outskirts of your current location or have your scientists abduct them from places across the country via the expedition center. The gameplay is also more tedious due to you having to send rangers to get a status checks on the dinosaurs to see their comfort and use the medical center to treat dinos with major injuries. While the new mechanics can be a handful since you have to do so much I prefer it over the first game since it's more engaging. I've heard off of pre-release reviews that the campaign is relatively short being around 3 hours. This is not as long as the first game which was around 10 hours to complete though, the main thing to make up for this is Chaos Theory. In Chaos Theory you follow the Jurassic Park/World movies in "what if?" scenarios. I haven't gotten the chance to play it yet but, I've heard it isn't all that great basically being from what I've heard "what if you were in charge of the park?". I'm not going to really judge it until I play it so take this portion with a grain of salt. Overall: The game is basically just a big DLC from the first game with extra mechanics, new dinosaurs, better graphics, and a new side story with the title of "campaign" slapped on it. From what I have played though I really enjoy it and recommended to anybody who really enjoyed the first game though, if you are new to the franchise just play the first game and wait for this to come on sale. If you actually read all of this thank you and I hope this helped you decide if you are going to purchase the game or not. If you do get it I hope you enjoy it as much as I am.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2021

  Frontier has had phenomenal success with Planet Zoo. It's one my favourite games ever. The depth it offers is seemingly endless, and all facets of the game are approached with love and care. The same cannot be said for Jurassic World Evolution, and, sadly, nor this sequel. I was hopeful that Evolution 2 would learn what to keep and what to discard, but in action it's effectively the same game with a few additions. I find it genuinely difficult to tell what's new here. This game is not worth even half of its asking price, let alone does it constitute a separate game from the original. It calls to mind Dead Island: Riptide or Saints Row 4 (which I liked, but I digress) being spun out of DLC for another game. The constraints of consoles are a recurrent complaint when talking about Planet Zoo versus Jurassic World Evolution, and though it's an apt point one must keep in mind when comparing the two, the sheer difference in quality between them becomes apparent when you look at any mechanic that the latter has. Evolution 2 is dominated by superficial and annoying elements that serve only to bog the game down in monotonous waiting. The AI is clunky, jeeps still cannot enter even slightly dense forests, the controls are sluggish, the fuelling and scanning mechanic is a truly baffling regression, and the campaign is absolutely dominated by timers that could take 1/20 of the time and still serve the same purpose. Sandbox content being locked behind progression in the campaign and challenge mode is another nonsensical decision that entirely defeats the purpose of it being a creative mode. The voice acting is average and used almost exclusively for cringe-worthy dialogue. I've had numerous graphical bugs, including a constant flickering in the fifth campaign (yes, I'm on the latest driver specifically for JWE2), though nothing major. Some positives, well, the download size is good I guess, as an Australian that's always a blessing. Jokes aside, the environments are realised very well and I do enjoy how open some of the campaign maps are. It lends a very safari-esque feel to the game. The dinosaurs and other included animals are similarly animated and modelled up to the standard that Frontier set with the first game and Planet Zoo. Regrettably, graphics alone cannot carry a game. Jurassic World Evolution was a very simple park simulator that failed to incorporate any of the depth introduced to the genre by the titans that preceded it. Many of us afforded Frontier leeway with this sequel as it was assumed that they would work on the problems of the first game. I'm tempted to say this is even worse, if only because they had the feedback to fix it, have done nothing with it, and in other aspects even doubled down. If you liked the first, it's a slight refinement that introduces a few fan favourite animals like the pteranodon and mosasaurus. It's tantamount to a remaster that introduces a couple little gimmicks that'll keep you occupied for a few minutes. EDIT AFTER CHAOS THEORY COMPLETION (11/11/2021): I've put fifteen more hours into the game since I wrote this review, and in that time have completed all five chaos theory levels. I wanted to give the game more of a chance, as forming an opinion from a few hours of gameplay can be shortsighted. People have been saying that the campaigns are more of a tutorial, and be that as it may, they fail to delve into any of the guest mechanics that are fleshed out in the sequel. My advice is to skip them and go straight into either chaos theory or the challenge modes, as either explore the game mechanics in much greater depth. The third and fifth chaos theory campaigns aren't worth the time, as both are marked by either repetitive or restricted gameplay. The aforementioned flickering dominates every map, and is accompanied by a motion blur that I've read is due to a specific anti-aliasing setting. This leads to goofy results, because it makes the dinosaurs look like they're the Flash or Quicksilver runnin' around in the Cretaceous. This added time has served only to further peel back the admittedly very beautiful facade that masks a fundamentally broken game. There is not a game in the world that should require this level of management to do simple tasks. I've put far too much time into ARK: Survival Evolved not to immediately recognise this manner of silly time wasting. You want to hatch a dinosaur? Here's a menu to select your 66+ million year old killing machine from! Now you get to pick some scientists to work on creating the eggs. A further minute~ later and you get to go into another menu to view and select the eggs. You then need to select more scientists to work on incubating the eggs and raising the young. After this, you get to go back once again and release the animal. The animal then takes about 30+ seconds to finish its exit animation before you can select it. Fortunately the developers were generous enough to allow you to view its statistics immediately after it exits the breeding chamber, as you'll unfortunately soon need to establish scans so that you can view its statistics. Your dinosaur has a health problem? Well, send the medics to do a scan and check what's wrong! If it's a disease, you get to select some scientists from a menu to waste a few minutes researching the illness, all so you can send the medic back to cure it. If your dinosaur has an injury, fun times are ahead, because you get to tranquillise it, transport it to the medic facility, select more scientists, wait until it's healed, and then transport it back. The game is chock full of similar time sinks, which isn't exactly the type of gameplay that one wishes to dominate this much time in a dinosaur zoo simulator game. Once you realise that the modules of your stores must be tailored to the guest type, money and your park rating become much simpler issues. Lagoons are wholly underdeveloped, featuring no customisation and the peculiar inability to navigate the camera beneath the water without first selecting marine reptiles from the map. It's a shame, because the marine reptiles that are in the game are a breath of fresh air, but they simply float through an endless and unchanging void. Perhaps the greatest sin of Evolution 2 is its habitat building. Arguably the biggest draw to this game -- and really any zoo simulator -- is the ability to build habitats in which you can see your animals live and breath. You have a number of rocks that you can choose from, which you cannot stack. All trees come in the form of brushes, which replace one another when intersecting. Water is shallow and circular, leading to featureless ponds. Though the expertly animated dinosaurs may indicate that there's depth to expect here, the total lack of behavioural variety belays the simplicity behind them. Whereas Planet Zoo will have a monkey leaping through trees, climbing through a beautiful environment, playing with toys, mating, socialising, fighting, sleeping, stressing out from visitors, pooping, etc, Evolution 2 has animals that wander around, sit, eat, and sometimes hunt or fight. Much the same as the marine reptiles drift through an endless sea, this game's land animals are static. If I had to put it in a few lines: With Jurassic World Evolution, Frontier dropped the ball. With Planet Zoo, they picked it back up in a big way. With Jurassic World Evolution 2, they proceeded to drop the ball back into a black hole that destroyed the earth (and my soul). The dinosaurs should count themselves lucky that they aren't around anymore.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 10, 2021

  I was going to wait till after Christmas to see if this was going to get better, but with down right frustrating stuff going on here, nah this needs to be done now. This is abysmally annoying compared to the first. I'll start off with the pros: Paleoboteny is now a part of paddock building itself, very welcome very nice. Good step up. Automation on the park vehicles is a lot better now, for the most part. Slightly bigger maps, though it may not seem like it where 1's were stretched out into long thin lines, these are all compact and lumpy. Looks pretty good again, the added colours are most welcome as 1 just had various shades of green and I'm running it max settings on a legion 5 laptop at about 50-60 fps (over 60 on some of the smaller maps). Some more customisation to the buildings (Love this). That's about it, and now onto the cons, and this hurts because it outright proves they arn't listening to fans ATALL: There are NO cosmetic prop options now minus rocks, and those rocks can be placed with some control but must have large gaps between them. I am outright sick of this "random placement mechanics" bull crap on things too, it's almost as if they think people have no imagination and can't do it themselves. I know for a fact, several posts have been BEGGING for more trees, fallen tree logs, old busted Ingen things. Did we get ANY of this? No, because "the stars are the dinosaurs!" and you made the dinosaurs boring AGAIN! :EDIT: There are some decorative props added to place around in the guests area of the park (in chaos and sandbox modes), however there is still absolutely nothing for the paddocks aside from some trees. There are over 300 shrubs in the game and they gave 7. Pointless, NEEDLESS stuff added into both ranger maintenance and dinosaur care. Dino ill? Tranq and send to vet. Broken leg? Send to vet. Grazed knee? OOP! It might make the dino a little disgruntled, OFF TO THE VET FOR YOU!! (For a fecking GRAZED KNEE!). Also, why oh WHY do I have to go look at the dino's every 5 minutes to know if they are ok? I can see them, yes hello, one is waving their little claw at me but i have to send this guy in to get owned by you now.... I mean its not like the movie had movement sensors, mics and cameras in the paddocks to keep tabs on that kind of thing. No, none of that, NOT LIKE YOU DON'T EVER SEE MULDOON ON ONE, IN A PARK WHERE THEY HAVE SPARED NO EXPENSE! *smacks head on desk....* Frustrating fuel and food system now. It's actually a bit harder to make money in this one, fair play was FAR to easy to get in the first one...to offset this, they give you less while making you spend WAY MORE on keeping all the sub stations fueled up, the vehicles, the food prep its absolutely pathetic. So many things are not explained until the last minute / it's to late. Lets have an example: UNREST. It does not tell you what this is, it doesn't pop up with a little box when you hover over it. There is no first level tutorial to help you through the new things, when you are just about to hit a sabotage event, THEN it tells you what unrest does! THEN it tells you, you need to keep resting them up and spending out MORE to keep your scientists happy too, so more money, time, boring, boring, GOD DAMN IT YOU ARE WORKING WITH DINOSAURS AND YOU ARE COMPLAINING!?!?!? ILL DO IT, FOR FREE!!!!! (oh and you need to build a staff building before you can do that). NO AI or time spent on the dinosaurs outside making them look pretty....AGAIN. No personality quirks, no random fights, no actual logic, just top trumps once more. I even put this in my last review for 1 they are just for show and nothing more. OH! and don't expect to have fun putting different dinosaurs in with each other anymore, they now absolutely HATE each other and you have to make sure you don't, *GASP!* PUT A SAUROPOD IN, WITH ANOTHER SAUROPOD!! I mean who'd have EVER THOUGHT 2 kinds of sauropod would like each other huh? You know they outright knew they lived together, right Frontier? I kid you not...I used to love making a long-neck paddock with ALL of them, big huge one...I can no longer do this, because apparently Diplodicus insulted Brachiosaur MANY centuries ago and have a long lasting vegi hatred toward each other....... this is beyond stupid. Incredibly boring, short campaign. You no longer get 4-5 things to do per island anymore, you no longer get any of the factions vying for your time, what you do get is one thing to do per mission and most can be completed in 20 minutes. Mission 4 is an absolute joke, "build aviary! make Pteranadons happy! YOU ARE DONE! WOOO! YOU CAN BREATH IN AN OUT, HAVE A COOKIE! that one takes 10 minutes. Bad callbacks to 1. All 3 of the department heads return, for some reason. They don't say hi, they don't have a chat with all the people from the first, its like it never happened. Poor entertainment dude just about gets to say "oh yeah hi im alive!" and Dua, the worst one gets an entire mission devoted to her annoying, contradictive, hypocritical voice (you'll find out when you play, basically all her dialogue from 1 is a joke now). Horrible banter between Claire and Owen. Everyone hated Finch? I liked Finch and he had some funny dad jokes.... I now miss those dad jokes, because I have these 2 Hollywood designed morons, split apart again and smashed together AGAIN like an 8 year old girl playing with barbie and ken. No thanks. Combining buildings. I hate this, I liked more buildings to use and play with, not combining them up, especially after you made me get used to one way of controlling them, threw it all out and went BACKWARD. Nothing of worth is really unlocked in campaign or chaos modes. That's right, those dinos, skins and pre-order bonus you spent out for? Yeah, ALL locked behind Challenge mode and can ONLY be used in sandbox :) No doing a little achievement to unlock a new skin in campaign or indeed ANYTHING else, sandbox is where you get your customisation now. Challenge mode is where it's all at now, the worst one out the lot! So basically there is no point playing the actual game or chaos till that is done. No thanks, I actually HATED challenge mode, being forced to rush and do things quickly makes me tune out. Why oh why would you make a game that you have to spend time on, quick to complete and then shove in timed challenges? 1's were more balanced weirdly enough. Are you afraid no one is going to play it unless it only lasts an hour now? Do you REALLY think people's attention spans are that small- OH LOOK A COMPY! HEHEHEHEHEHH (same thing happened with Terraria really...) Addendum: I no longer feel guilty due to sheer frustration, here is more. Chaos theory is boring and artificially extended to hair losingly frustrating point: Mission 1 and 2 (JP and Lost world) acceptable, though basically just a small grind. Mission 3, boringly quick and can be completed in about 15 minutes. Mission 4, outright FUCK IT! Artificially made harder by everything being more expensive, tornado's that glue to the most "fuck your park!" paths they can and finally mission 5, stare at some dinos, sell everything from the old park and you are done! Thanks for the 60 pound idiot!!! New Edit: They have been deleting comments left right and centre on their posts, including a funny one i made getting WAY more points than their posts were getting...they didn't like that. They are also making sure the negative reviews don't show up, because they have 3x the amount of up-votes compared to the positive reviews (which mostly consist of HURR HURR DINO GO BURR!!). So now I not only mark down the game, but I'm never buying another one of your products frontier, you are truly disgusting if that's how low you have to stoop to make yourselves look better. Also, if you are a 10 year old child coming here purely to say how much I need to die for not liking this game, then your comment is gone and please stop adding me to try vent your frustration. Thanks.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 12, 2021

  I wanna say this game is great, I wanna say this game is fun and addictive because it kind of is, I accidentally played this game from 1pm till 5am. But the game has Argentinasarus-sized problems namely the *extremely* heavy focus on chores, this game is more chore than park builder; Triceratops hurt itself fighting a herd member? Well, manually tell the Vet to identify whats wrong, manually tell a chopper to come and tranq it, then manually tell *another* chopper to take the Trike back to the Vet office and manually tell which scientist to spray magic heal stuff onto the dino (Seriously.. why not just a lazy animation of a scientist standing next to the dino with a clipboard instead of the weird robot healing spray that heals broken fucking bones???) and then manually tell the chopper to bring the dino back to its enclosure. All of that just to keep a dinosaur from dying to it's own scripted behaviour. Why? Just why, Frontier? Want to recruit scientists? Well, pray to RNGesus who's church is just down the block cus you'll need 'im on your side if you want a well rounded staff and not severely lacking in some departments because it's very easy for the game to give you a scientist who's really 'good' in the Genetics department but can have NO skill points IN the genetics skill, fucking WHY, Frontier? Dinosaur behaviours have got to be really cool though... right? I mean, if you really enjoy most of your dinosaurs having extreme and random beef with their enclosure buddies and CONSTANTLY trying to kill eachother even if they're within their perfect environments and are supposedly "content" I don't know how many times my Dilophosarus 3 and 5 would literally give eachother organ failure and the second both were healed up and put back into their enclosures I'd almost immediately get another warning that they would be fighting and having to fight the UI because alot of the time the dinosaurs hitbox seems to disappear entirely and the game doesnt recognize youre hovering over a dino and you have to exit the ranger or vet management view and reopen it. Sometimes your vet team will indefinitely try to heal a dinosaur that naturally healed back up because the Vet truck decided it needed to go forwards and backwards for 10 minutes because a single palm tree is infront of it and the AI doesn't understand what left or right are TLDR; Jurassic World? More like do fucking chores and turning every single simple act into a 15 step process that pulls the player away from building a fucking park like you're supposed to be doing and forcing you to wonder how the FUCK you're supposed to make money
• gamedeal user

  Nov 13, 2021

  I loved the first game (after DLCs and patches) for reference. This game's campaign feels more like a tutorial. It's short and there's no optional objectives like 5 starring each island in the first game. You can't even use the vast majority of the dinos in the campaign, and it doesn't even introduce aquatic reptiles. I also encountered a soft lock during one of the missions which required me to restart from an earlier save. Aside from content issues, they've really overdone it with how high maintenance the dinos are. I could not go a full minute without dinos getting sick or injured, despite all being at 100% comfort. This meant I was constantly having to send the heli to tranquilize, and then transport them to the medical facility. It's just not fun to micromanage to this degree, as it was taking up all my time, preventing me from researching, sending expeditions, or building more attractions (not to mention customizing them). I want to love this game, but it just feels like the fun stuff is inaccessible due to the sheer amount of chores that need to be attended to at all times.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 21, 2021

  At the moment of writing this review, I have played 52 hours and finished the entire campaign gameplay and have done all chaos theories. I was never really a fan of the challenge mode so this review will not touch that. To start with, I have played the 1st game (JWE) 151 hours on PC and 56 hours on my Nintendo Switch. Needless to say I loved the original game so much that I played the game again and again. When they announced that a 2nd game was coming, I was so hyped to play it. Please note that below will be a list of spoilers of the game mechanics but if you're wondering whether to buy this game, I really do recommend you read this to first think before you spend those sweet 60€ on this. So what's good about the game so far? Here are my picks, you may disagree but this is a personal opinion/review after all: - Realistic herbivores. They actually eat plants now to survive, not die from starvation when they have foliage around them but no feeder-bush nearby. - More skins! Soooo many colors now to choose from... Although the skin concept is actually a clickbait, you have those different "patterns" like Rana, Lithobates, Chalcorana etc. that actually aren't even different patterns, just different accent colors to go with the main color. But I am still happy we can go full fashionista on our dinos now. - The environmental graphics. O. M. G. So good! Insanely pretty are those worlds with an autumn aesthetic, and snow! Wow! Couldn't have imagined such pretty scenery - More dinosaur behavior. I screamed when I saw my Dryosaurus cuddling with each other. And it's insanely adorable when the dinos roll around on the ground, scratching their back like Toothless in the 1st HTTYD movie. - More dinosaurs and new habitats! You can now have marine reptiles which is awesome! But my favorite is the new aviary system where you can have many flyers together in a customized habitat. Super-super cool, loved my Tropeognathus so much! - Hatcheries improved. You can now have dinos hatched in batches, not one at a time. Saves the herds from being too lonely. And when I wanted a dinosaur in another enclosure, you can now airlift the dinosaurs through the hatchery or release the entire batch at the same time! Awesome mini-scenarios are played every time What do I absolutely hate and despise about this game? Really... - Bugs. The amount of bugs that this game has is heartbreaking. I have had dinosaurs standing on one place, tippy-toeing and not moving in order to feed and drink water. No, they instead glitched out completely and starved/dehydrated to death if you did not choose to sell them (and not to mention sometimes you COULDN'T sell them! So you were stuck with that animal til it died, causing guests to feel uncomfortable to see it visibly die). (EDIT: A friend of mine said that this tippy-toe bug - similarly to the 1st game's Gigantspinosaurus loop-fighting bug - can be fixed with reloading the save, going out and back into the save. But I just wish I didn't have to do that, it's game-breaking.) The most annoying and absurd bug so far however has been when my Dracorex was permanently stuck inside a Paleo-Medical Facility. Literally, could not demolish the building, transportation did not work as a helicopter was above the facility, static. Could not sell the Dracorex because it simply did not send another helicopter over to do the job. And so for now it's been 70 dinosaur years like this. I abandoned the save. - Unnecessary herbivore(/dinosaur) aggression. You literally have to now see who fits together with who. So many of our dreams crushed when they announced that you can no longer have an all ceratopsian or sauropod family enclosure. No, instead, now they just try and kill each other (even without the aggression and intolerance traits!). And their own herdmates as well! The amount of Crichtonsaurus that I had to reincubate (like 6 times??) because its herdmate kept killing them all and, oops, it was then lonely for having killed each one of them. It made me verbally angry and swear at the screen every time I saw a dead dinosaur caused by their herdmate who then proceeded to feel lonely after what they had done... - The chores and the extra clicks, Jesus, don't get me started. 1) The amenities that 1 minute give you 20k income, and then 2 minutes later you are in a drop of income and it makes no sense and you cannot tell what's causing this because you have so many dinosaurs near that building. 2) The RNG luck you have to have to get good and not-so-expensive scientists is beyond me. 3) The new Ranger Team task system is infuriating. You have to assign Rangers to Ranger post because apparently now we have no clue how dinosaurs feel like in the 1st game and must constantly manually monitor them. Yet sometimes those Ranger teams just... stayed in their base and literally did nothing... or they kept driving into a Triceratops and not going around it, causing a message afterwards that my team was destroyed :) what. 4) The MVU system is the biggest flop I would say, as you first have to give it a task to take care of the dinosaurs by scanning it. Then you have 2 options: minor wounds means you have to tell the MVU AGAIN (before it rushed back to the freaking base) that it has to now HEAL the dinosaurs; or you have the major wound issue and have to tell a Capture team to tranq it, then transport the dinosaur to the med facility, assign a med scientist on it, wait til it's healed and - here comes the weirdest part - assign a Paleo-Medical facility transportation team (not the regular one!!) to send the dinosaur back to its enclosure. So many unnecessary mechanics and clicks and micromanagements, let alone having to put scientists to rest so often to avoid sabotage (which the game never taught you to do btw until it was too late) - Campaign is not campaign. It's a tutorial. When I first played the campaign I was like "Wait, is it just me or this was so damn easy?" Yep, it was. It's a tutorial. The real campaign is the "Chaos theory". Why they changed the names and not just have "Tutorial" and "Campaign"? No clue, maybe gameplay bait. - The dialogues. They feel so unnatural, unlike in the 1st game where I felt like they were actually talking like grownups and me like a park manager. Even Cabot Finch sounded very over-characterized unlike in the 1st game. Claire and Owen's dialogue was sometimes even cringy, especially the Blue saving part. Like, we get it, she's important, but you don't have to say that a dozen times (exaggerating here but it went on too long). I just wished it had the same feel, not be so cartoony, and more like in the 1st game. - Contracts from the 1st game were replaced with monthly contracts you can choose for money. But those open up AFTER finishing a theory mode. Which by then you already have quite a lot of money. Don't really see the point in them. Here you have it. This is how I feel and why I wish I had not pre-ordered the game and first waited for the game to improve instead. But I'm glad I finished what I was looking for. Hopefully the DLCs will bring something different and cooler. If you think I missed something on the positive and negative sides but is worth mentioning, feel free to comment on this review but I will not be replying to those who'll judge me greatly for my honesty. EDIT: 130 peeps upvoting this! Thank you for the support, I'm glad I could be helpful to some by going into extreme detail. Fingers crossed that they start working hard on fixing the game's flaws! EDIT 2: Wow!! Over 320 people upvoting this! If still playing this game and you're having troubles with overcrowding, hotel and amenity management or whatever and need some tips on that, feel free to send a friend request to me and I can perhaps help out with reaching 5 stars. EDIT 3: 777 upvotes, you guys are crazy :) After Update 1, I went to see how the game was. Well, lol this vid says it all
• gamedeal user

  Dec 1, 2021

  I've read and watched Reviews for Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Most of them said that this was a Basically the first game just with a more Dinos and different maps. I broke up the review so you can skip and just read the parts that may interest you. GAMEPLAY: The game plays as the first one however, there are much different locations and settings. The weather is actually really nice. Instead or Rain and Tornados you get to see Snow (depending on location of course), Sandstorms, etc. There is more content and the dinosaurs looked a bit more improved. I noticed there was a real difference in Animations such as the Carnivores eating the Live Prey. CAMPAIGN: The story is very short. I finished it in one play through and that was about 3 Hours. This is alright but this isn't the mode you should really be playing if you played the first one or are looking for an actual play session with this game. I only really recommend People who aren't to familiar with the Jurassic Park/ World story or someone learning how to play the game. CHALLENGE MODE: This is where you will spend most of your time. This mode allows the players to start from scratch and build their own park. The player will start off with a certain amount of money (ex: Medium Difficulty gives you $5 Million) and use that given amount to Build, Fund Expeditions to get fossils, Hire Scientists based on their offering skills which plays a huge role in Researching or overlooking a project, Fund the Synthesizing phase of a dinosaur and then fund the Incubation process as well. This really makes the player think about their choices. CHAOS THEORY MODE: This mode allows the player to go back to anyone of the locations from any of the franchise Movies and create a "what if moment". Think of this being like the Jurassic Park DLC for the first game but you have all of the movies in this one and the Dinosaurs that were in the movies for the appropriate films, Or if you wanna add different Dinos to a certain park you can do that as well. PRICE: So Gameplay wise it will keep you playing for hours. But is this game worth the full price of $60? I would have to say that it will depend on the person. I can say I did not mind spending full price on it however, I would have liked to spend less on it as you get a more bang for your buck game. I say this cause they do reuse the soundtrack from the first game in this one (was not a bad soundtrack but gives the impression that they did not care about the music). I guess chaos theory, the more in depth management system makes up for what the first lacked as this a More improved version of it. But if you played the first game Hardcore than you may not like what this brings to a table. This is a also a new game but I would imagine for the winter sale it may go down in price. If you are a casual player, like management or tycoon styles games or are a fan of the series then I would add it to your wish list.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 7, 2021

  This game is enjoyable enough, but I'm convinced Frontier doesn't fully understand why people play these types of games. We don't play it to do missions. We don't play it to go "click click click" like a mobile game. We don't play it to go around checking fuel levels on half of the buildings or to constantly need to bring dinos to a medical center. We play to build a park. I long for the days of a simple sandbox style Jurassic...Park/World park builder. The formula is incredibly simple: - Random gen (or just a set number of hand crafted maps) a map - All dinos available to be researched and cloned immediately. Just need the building and money to research. None of this "unlocking it" BS that requires you to photograph a dino jumping on another dino while peeing just to get access. None of this "get X stars in challenge mode" to get the dino you want. (Jurassic Park Operation Genesis comes to mind) - Missions should be a thing you do on the side, if you want, but not required. - Build a profitable park with attractions, stores and shops, keep visitors safe and happy, keep dinos happy, investors happy, and enjoy designing a beauitful park. - Sandbox options to make it as easy or as difficult as you want. Things like starting capital, dino need level "Forgiveness" (how demanding the dinos are to keep happy), and the like. (Yes, sandbox sort of has this...but you only really get to enjoy it fully after you've unlocked everything...which requires you to do the missions...which is NOT why we play. You should get this mode right at purchase) If anyone wants to make bank, who has the skills and capital, I could easily see an indie dev coming along and putting this entire gaming franchise in the grave simply by following a formula that works with what we want. That game becoming the "City Skylines" answer to the new, crappy Sim City, as an analogy. With that said, I'm enjoying it enough to recommend the base game, but only because they did the dinos really really well. The deluxe edition really isn't worth it.